Truce announcement delayed

Posted: Friday, November 03, 2000

GREG MYREThe Associated Press

JERUSALEM A thunderous car bomb killed two Israelis near a crowded Jerusalem market on Thursday, escalating tensions as Israeli and Palestinian leaders put off a truce announcement meant to end five weeks of fighting.

Islamic militants claimed responsibility for the blast, which killed the daughter of a right-wing Israeli political leader. Elsewhere, Palestinian areas were again aflame, with two Palestinians killed and at least 80 injured in the West Bank, doctors and rescue workers said.

The violence endangered and might have scuttled the latest in a series of cease-fire agreements.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat initially planned to simultaneously declare a truce at 2 p.m. The announcements were delayed with the expectation they would come a few hours later.

But shortly after 3 p.m., a Mazda car loaded with explosives detonated on a narrow residential street less than 200 yards from the congested Mahane Yehuda market.

Flames leaped high into the air, sending up huge black plumes of black smoke as wailing ambulances converged on the working-class area lined with old stone apartment buildings. Eleven people including four children were slightly injured in addition to the two killed.

Police identified the dead as Hanan Levy, 32, and Ayelet Hashahar-Levy, 24. They were not related.

Ayelet Hashahar-Levy was the daughter of Yitzhak Levy, leader of the National Religious Party. Yitzhak Levy has served as a minister in several Israeli governments. He left his post in Baraks government because of disagreements over the peace process.

His daughter had just moved to Jerusalem and was bringing her belongings to a house in the area at the time of the explosion, police said. One witness said he tried to pull her from the flames.

I saw her on the ground and her legs had been blown off, said Yaakov Hassoum. I hoped she was alive, but she was dead.

Hundreds of onlookers clogged the streets as policemen pushed the crowd back. Some young Israelis chanted, Death to Arabs and We want revenge.

A group calling itself the military wing of the Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack. In a statement, the group said the bombing was carried out in reply to the enemys crimes against our Palestinian people and promised more attacks.

Israel said it was standing by the truce reached Wednesday night in a meeting between Arafat and Israeli elder statesman Shimon Peres. The agreement was intended to stop the fighting and open the borders of closed-off Palestinian areas.

The Palestinian leadership issued a statement Thursday urging Palestinians to stick to peaceful means in protests, but it fell well short of what Israel expected. Arafat, who met in Gaza with the European Union peace envoy, Miguel Moratinos, said the ball was in the Israeli court.

We are still waiting for the official response of the Israeli government, especially after we had declared our statement by the name of the Palestinian leadership, Arafat said in English.

Israeli television said Barak was not expected to make an announcement, though the two sides continued to have high-level contacts.

We are still waiting for (Arafat) to come before his people and convey a big message about the need to stop the violence, Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami said in New York.

Representatives of both sides said the next 48 hours would be a major test of whether the cease-fire deal could hold in the absence of formal statements.

The coming 48 hours will be a test for the Israeli government to implement its commitments, said Arafat aide Nabil Aburdeneh. Ben-Ami echoed: I expect that in the coming 48 hours well be wiser and then well see.

At the White House, President Clinton said: We were reminded once again in Jerusalem that there are those who seek to destroy the peace through acts of terror. This cannot be permitted to prevail.

The deaths in Jerusalem and the West Bank brought to 165 the number killed in 36 days of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, the worst violence since the two sides began peace negotiations in 1993. Most of the victims have been Palestinians.

At the scene of the bombing, a traffic officer said he had placed a parking ticket on the car about 15 minutes before the explosion because it did not have a permit to park on the street, army radio reported.

The car was hot when I touched it, said the officer, identified only as Danny. I did not see anything suspicious. Maybe it parked a minute or a minute and a half before I came.

The injured included four children, ages 6 to 17, who were visiting their grandmother to get away from their home in the Gilo neighborhood on the southern edge of Jerusalem, which has come under repeated gunfire.

Two weeks ago I sent my children to live with their grandmother in town, said Amnon Or, the childrens father. They were suffering shock from the noise, the gunfire.

The Jerusalem market has been a prime target for those trying to sabotage peace. Hamas claimed responsibility for a 1998 car bomb that killed two suicide bombers. In 1997, two militants blew themselves up in the area, also killing 16 shoppers.

After Barak was elected in May 1998, Israel and the Palestinian territories went more than a year without a fatal bombing. However, an Israeli soldier was killed Sept. 27 in a roadside bombing in the Gaza Strip, and a suicide bomber blew himself up near an Israeli army post in Gaza on Oct. 26.